Absurdly, stupidly basic cooking questions (Part 2)

[dockhl]

This boiled egg mess is a real bugaboo of mine. First of all it's not easy but you can do it.

But you have to have cold water, lowering eggs into boiling or hot water will toughen the whites.

So cover your eggs in cold water, set the pot of eggs on the flame and set the timer for 6 minutes to bring them to a boil. Didja know you can put a lid on it at this boiling point and turn off the fire for 10-11 minutes and they will be done perfectly? Or you can turn the flame down low and set the timer for 10-11 minutes.

Now no diddling when the timer goes off. Set the pot in the sink as is, don't pour out the water. Remove one egg with a spoon and hold it under cold running water just briefly so you can grab it in your hand and whack the fat end of the shell and break the shell good there at the top and keep it under the running cold water, completely de-shell it. You wanna get the water between that membrane there and the white. Just do each one in turn.

It never works for me to let them set and cool or anything. I time it and do this all right away.

Good Luck! Just say no to (over cooked) green yolks in boiled eggs!!

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I agreee with it all but, in reality (and addition) , eggs that are too fresh are harder to peel no matter how you make them.

K(who uses the 'turning off method')

[beccaboo]

You can hard-boil your eggs in a pressure cooker and they'll be easy to peel. Just cover with cold water, seal, bring to high pressure, cook five minutes, quick-release. Just be sure to do a couple of extra eggs in case some of them explode.

[judiu]

If you use a push pin, or a lancet to make a small hole in the big end of the shell before you cook the eggs, not only do they not crack and leak out in the water, but they're much easier to peel. HTH!

[liri]

After you boil your eggs and drain the water, just put one or two eggs back into the pan, cover and rotate the pan in quick circles for a bit. The shell usually peels off in one or two big pieces.

[Jan Primus]

My absurdly stupid simple question has to do with vegetable storage...should I leave them in the plastic baggies they come in from the grocery store or should I take them out and put them in the crisper drawer? thanks.

[Magictofu]

Question: Can you make a butter sauce (e.g. beurre blanc) with clarified butter?

I made a large batch of crab butter and would love to transform it into sauces. Because the butter has to be melted and the impurities removed in the making of any crustacean butter, the resulting butter becomes automatically some kind of variation of clarified butter.

Last week, I tried to make the equivalent of a beurre blanc with my crab butter but the sauce split... So far, I still can't explain what happened exactly... I am quite sure I did not make any mistake (such as using too much heat) ... Is it possible that since clarified butter is no longer an emulsion of fat, buttermilk and milk solids it becomes almost impossible to emulsify a sauce with such a butter?

If this is the case, I guess my last hope would be to make some kind of hollandaise sauce...

[Alchemist]

What are the five mother sauces?

It's been almost 20 years since culinary school, and I've lost my Escoffier.

Edited April 9, 2007 by Alchemist (log)

[ned]

How do you store tofu once you've opened the container? How do you know when tofu has gone bad?

[dockhl]

What are the five mother sauces?

It's been almost 20 years since culinary school, and I've lost my Escoffier.

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# Espagnole

# Béchamel

# Velouté

# Hollandaise (butter sauces)

# Tomato

[dockhl]

How do you store tofu once you've opened the container?  How do you know when tofu has gone bad?

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Small Planet says:

Storage Tips

Gone are the days when storing tofu was a hassle. Storage isn't such a big deal anymore. You used to need to immediately open the tofu and place it in fresh water, and replace the water every day to get any real shelf-life out of it. We vacuum pack our tofu, which means you can keep it in the refrigerator without touching it until you're ready to use it.

In the rare case that you don't use the whole package of tofu, you can find a Tupperware or cottage cheese container to store it in. When storing leftover tofu, you will need to cover it in water, and try to change the water once a day to extend its shelf life to seven to 10 days. Try not to touch the tofu with your bare hands.

If the tofu has a rotten smell or if it's become pink or orange, that means it’s gone bad and should be discarded. If the tofu has turned a yellowish-brown, it’s sort of like cheese that’s been exposed to air; simply cut off the affected part.

Tofu with a sour or lemony odor has come close to the end of its life but is still usable if cooked, steamed or parboiled.

[Alchemist]

What are the five mother sauces?

It's been almost 20 years since culinary school, and I've lost my Escoffier.

←

# Espagnole

# Béchamel

# Velouté

# Hollandaise (butter sauces)

# Tomato

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It's all coming back, the smell of roasting veal bones, and the cramps from a hand made hollaindaise, where you couldn't add a splash of water or lemon while whisking.

I remember the Espangole as a take off of a Demi Glace. And what was the french name for a tomato sauce?

[mrbigjas]

My absurdly stupid simple question has to do with vegetable storage...should I leave them in the plastic baggies they come in from the grocery store or should I take them out and put them in the crisper drawer? thanks.

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depends on the vegetable. i've found that a lot of grocery stores shower their vegetables with water, so if you leave them in the bag they start to rot. this is especially true of herbs. if so, take them out, wrap them in a paper towel to absorb the excess moisture and put them in a dry bag.

generally i leave them in the bag but the key thing seems to be taking off the twist ties that hold them together. they rot under that.

i don't leave a lot of things loose. root vegetables. citrus.

[daisy17]

It's all coming back, the smell of roasting veal bones, and the cramps from a hand made hollaindaise, where you couldn't add a splash of water or lemon while whisking.

I remember the Espangole as a take off of a Demi Glace.  And what was the french name for a tomato sauce?

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It appears that demi-glace is reduced/strained/finished Espagnole.

Tomato sauce = Sauce tomatee

Want to trade Escoffier for Charles H. Baker?

Edited April 10, 2007 by daisy17 (log)

[offcentre]

Question When breadcrumbing for deep frying, recipes call for dipping the item in flour, then egg, then crumbs. When I do this the flour prevents the egg from sticking, so I don't get a proper covering of crumbs. I just omit the flour now. Am I doing something wrong?

Edited April 10, 2007 by offcentre (log)

[rooftop1000]

The process is called standard breading and its...well the standard.

If you really pat the flour off the egg should stick

but I dont use the flour, so shoot me

tracey

[paulraphael]

Here's one: How bad (or good) an idea is it to freeze meat? I've almost never done it ... usually just get what I can cook. But lately I've been braising large cuts, and I rarely have the need for 9 lbs of cooked meat all at once.

It seems to me that freezing meat in a home freezer (slowly) is bound to cause cellular damage that leads to lots of extra fluid loss when the meat is cooked. But I've never done side-by-side tests, and I know a lot of people freeze meat with impunity.

Thoughts?

[Magictofu]

Question When breadcrumbing for deep frying, recipes call for dipping the item in flour, then egg, then crumbs. When I do this the flour prevents the egg from sticking, so I don't get a proper covering of crumbs. I just omit the flour now. Am I doing something wrong?

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You need very little flour... too much and nothing will stick. If you don't put anything, the eggs won't stick either.

You might want to add a little bit of water to your eggs to thin them out... it also helps.

[paulraphael]

Question: Can you make a butter sauce (e.g. beurre blanc) with clarified butter?

I made a large batch of crab butter and would love to transform it into sauces. Because the butter has to be melted and the impurities removed in the making of any crustacean butter, the resulting butter becomes automatically some kind of variation of clarified butter.

Last week, I tried to make the equivalent of a beurre blanc with my crab butter but the sauce split... So far, I still can't explain what happened exactly...

As you discovered, it won't work. Beurre blanc is unique because the butter itself is the only emulsifier ... most other butter sauces use an additional emulsifying agent, like an egg sabayon. Butter works as an emulsifier only because it is an emulsion itself, between butterfat and water. The emulsifying agent in the butter is the milk proteins. When you clarify the butter, you remove the water, and more importantly, the proteins.

So trying to make a beurre blanc with clarified butter is trying to make an emulsion without an emulsifier.

It IS possible to make a hollandaise family sauce with clarified butter. Some sauciers do this, because it results in a thick texture (more mayonaise-like) that's appropriate for some uses. But it loses some of the complex butter flavor in the process. And you won't be able to get a light, airy sauce unless you use whole butter.

Broken butter sauces can be made with clarified butter. So can compound butters.

Edited April 10, 2007 by paulraphael (log)

[K8memphis]

Question When breadcrumbing for deep frying, recipes call for dipping the item in flour, then egg, then crumbs. When I do this the flour prevents the egg from sticking, so I don't get a proper covering of crumbs. I just omit the flour now. Am I doing something wrong?

←

You need very little flour... too much and nothing will stick. If you don't put anything, the eggs won't stick either.

You might want to add a little bit of water to your eggs to thin them out... it also helps.

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Yes add water or milk and beat the eggs a bit to loosen them up. When you do the flouring you have to kinda pat the item with your hand to loosen the extra flour or kinda jiggle the piece or whatever you are breading so it will still be coated but with the barest amount like MagicTofu said. Knock it gently on the side of the container.

Then dip in egg -- and your container should have a nice quantity of egg so you can dunk the piece into the mixture and hold it down on that side so the flour gets absorbed into the egginess but it's all still sticking to the chicken and turn and do the other side/s. Then kind of hold it up so gravity pulls off the excess then again kind of jiggle it to release the last bit of excess. Maybe gently swipe the tip of the piece without wiping off your moistened flour.

Then when you put it into the final coating you can kind of be sure the breading soaks up into all the egg stuff. I use a little pressure to coat.

In other words, you have a nice quantity of the flour, the egg mixture and breading. At the first stop, you coat well but tap off the excess. In the egg you coat well, letting the flour absorb the egg. Then into the final coat you make sure the egg absorbs plenty of breading.

The dishes you use can be a factor. You want to use something big enough for the size of the pieces you are coating but you need an inch at least of stuff in there for nice results. Some people use plastic bags to coat stuff. That's too messy for me, but works great for some.

Happy frying!

PS. and umm, like if you were breading chicken, you would dry it off with a paper towel so that the flour will adhere to the chicken's own moist surface not to water globules.

Edited April 10, 2007 by K8memphis (log)

[Blether]

Can someone please tell me how to produce perfectly peelable hardboiled eggs?

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I think liri's got it right - peel them by breaking all the shell up into little pieces before your start to peel them (I do it just by tapping them all over against something hard - bowl, pot, sink... then taking the peel off in a couple of drags of the thumb to pick up the membrane and broken-up shell together. A run under the tap takes off any reluctant fragments.

I don't look twice at whether the eggs are new or old, other than to adjust the cooking time (fresher take half a minute or a minute longer).

[Kouign Aman]

I've always frozen braised meat and its fine afterward. Then again, I braise mine til it shreds, so the cooking process has already done a lot of 'damage' to the structure. Anything that stays too long in the freezer will get freezerburn. Ick. And ziplocs impose a flavor over time too. Very ick.

[NeilMalek]

I always used to get headaches over peeling eggs, until I read somewhere (I want to say it's in one of Alton's cookbooks) that you can more easily peel them underwater. Not under running water, but actually fill a pot with water, dunk the whole thing, and go through the peeling process. It's lightning fast and clean.

[Magictofu]

As you discovered, it won't work. Beurre blanc is unique because the butter itself is the only emulsifier ... most other butter sauces use an additional emulsifying agent, like an egg sabayon. Butter works as an emulsifier only because it is an emulsion itself, between butterfat and water. The emulsifying agent in the butter is the milk proteins. When you clarify the butter, you remove the water, and more importantly, the proteins.

So trying to make a beurre blanc with clarified butter is trying to make an emulsion without an emulsifier.

It IS possible to make a hollandaise family sauce with clarified butter. Some sauciers do this, because it results in a thick texture (more mayonaise-like) that's appropriate for some uses. But it loses some of the complex butter flavor in the process. And you won't be able to get a light, airy sauce unless you use whole butter.

Broken butter sauces can be made with clarified butter. So can compound butters.

←

Thanks for the explanation! I might try to use what is left of my crab butter in a hollandaise sauce for a Sunday brunch.

[Restorer]

My technique for hard-boiled eggs is to run the cold tap over a hot egg for a good 15-20 seconds, then switch the tap to hot and run the egg under it for just a couple seconds. It seems that the thermal shock from going from hot to cold and back to hot is enough to loosen the shell from the egg.

[SheenaGreena]

I always used to get headaches over peeling eggs, until I read somewhere (I want to say it's in one of Alton's cookbooks) that you can more easily peel them underwater.  Not under running water, but actually fill a pot with water, dunk the whole thing, and go through the peeling process.  It's lightning fast and clean.

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that or you run the eggs under cold water (while in the pot) and then shake the pot from side to side so the eggs crack under water...makes the eggs easy to peel and works every time for me